Dolby Atmos is the default Spatial Audio format that Apple uses and while it is well suited for music and film, creating a reverb that's conducive to making you feel as though you're in a music studio or a cinema, we found it didn’t work so well for our specific goal of recreating natural outdoor ambient experiences, where sound is expansive and dynamic. And so instead of using Dolby Atmos, we partnered with Atmoky, a world-leading Spatial Audio R&D company, to deploy a custom format which uses higher order Ambisonics (often used for VR) that are better suited for recreating the auditory experience of actually being in nature.

With Atmoky's assistance, the Portal app renders the spatial audio itself, and therefore by-passing Dolby Atmos. As a result, the Control Center toggle will appear to indicate that Spatial Audio is disabled.